简析宪法中的效率原则

宪法中的效率原则包含4个范畴。其中,最大化原则无法被比例原则所涵盖。若不考虑最大化原则,在审查国家财政任务的合宪性时,效率原则可以被视为比例原则的重要组成部分。作为一项宪法原则,效率原则不仅约束行政机关,而且约束立法机关。对于行政机关而言,由审计机关审查其活动是否符合效率原则。而对于代议机关而言,审查其行为是否符合效率原则的任务可以交给违宪审查机关,审计机关在必要时须提供专业咨询和建议。     

The adoption of women’s legislative caucuses worldwide

Recent decades have witnessed the rise, across a wide range of countries, of political institutions designed to promote gender equality and women’s political representation. Existing studies have shown how international diffusion processes have contributed to the adoption of two kinds of such institutions – gender mainstreaming and gender quotas. Mounting evidence suggests that institutional reforms within legislatures constitute the latest wave of gendered institutional reform. This article identifies and explains trends in the adoption of one kind of gender-focused parliamentary institution – women’s legislative caucuses (WLCs). We use a discrete time duration model to assess the effect of several factors on WLC establishment. While there is theoretical room to expect diffusion, structural and institutional variables to affect the likelihood of caucus adoption, we find the strongest empirical support for diffusion and institutional factors. A parliament’s likelihood of adopting a WLC rises when sub-regional peers have created WLCs, when women’s international non-governmental organizations are active in the country and when the country has implemented a gender quota. Understanding the factors that affect the adoption of gender-focused parliamentary institutions is critically important, we argue, since such bodies provide space to confront masculinized institutionalized rules and norms.     

Urbanization,Proximity, and the Intra-State Context of Women's Representation

ABSTRACT

The impact of context on women candidates has been vigorously studied using comparisons of state-level data and found to be substantial. Many of the variables used in this research were measured at the state level even though their influence is theorized at the district level and observed to vary within states. This essay tests these intra-state contextual influences using regression analysis of state House of Representatives district-level contextual data in four states from 1982-1990. The findings confirm contradict, and provide mixed results for particular state-level results.     

Machinery of Government in Small States: Issues,Challenges and Innovatory Capacity

Small states present particular challenges to designers of political and administrative systems, and far too often their governing patterns have been imposed by former colonial powers. There are nonetheless excellent examples of efforts to design systems which are appropriate to the needs of the small states themselves. This is explored in relation to the pattern of ministries and departments, the use of executive committees, the structure and size of legislatures, head of state/head of government arrangements, and a range of other machinery-of-government issues. Consideration also is given to factors which can be exploited to develop innovative capacity in small states, and some areas for further research are suggested.     

The Influence of Term Limits on the Electoral Success of Women

ABSTRACT

In this paper I develop a theoretical approach that rehabilitates identity as a political and interpretive, not essentialist, category. To this end, I explore versions of feminist standpoint theory developed by Nancy Hartsock and Alison Jaggar. While these versions of standpoint theory have marked the significance of experience and knowledge for feminist practice, their conception of subjectivity is too unified and, therefore, creates problems for addressing the epistemological implications of “difference.” For this approach to feminist subjectivity, power relations of race, class, and nation are “differences” which are viewed as threatening endless fragmentation or promising plurality. Alternatively, following Norma Alarcon's theory of multiple-voiced subjectivity, I argue that relations of power produce complex subjectivities situated within multiple, intersecting axes of power: race, class, sex, gender, nation. These relations of power mark the terrain of experience as an interpretive field for the production of knowledge and collective identity. This approach shifts the interpretation of experience and knowledge from a paradigm of essentialism, fragmentation, and pluralist difference to a paradigm of accountability and coalition.     

坚持和完善全国人大的会期制度

会期制度是立法机关活动的一项基本制度.在一定条件下,会期时间的多少决定着立法的民主程度.全国人大的会期制度是人民代表大会制度的重要组成部分,符合国情,必须坚持,但也需要完善.在对全国人大的会期制度进行量化的、比较的分析之后,有必要提出若干完善全国人大会期制度的建议.